


the morning when it’s clear

by hihoplastic



Series: The Worst Witch Tumblr Prompts [11]
Category: The Worst Witch (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, tw: mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 22:23:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13063392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hihoplastic/pseuds/hihoplastic
Summary: Five times Hecate woke up alone, and one time she didn’t.





	the morning when it’s clear

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thank you to fanchonmoreau on tumblr for the prompt (Hecate + "In my dreams my beloved lies beside me/when the sun lights the room, I find it's only me")  
> \- Title from Florence and the Machine's "No Light, No Light"  
> \- Thanks to Rachael for the help coming up with some of these! <3

_**i.** _

The house is silent when she wakes—no cleaning spells, no music, not even her father’s low and perpetually angry timbre—and Hecate knows instantly something is wrong.

The indent of her mother’s head on the pillow beside her has faded, shallow now in the early morning light.

Hecate eases herself out of bed—quiet, in case her father is still sleeping. Nothing and no one moves, and she thinks perhaps she’s imagining things, that her mother has merely returned to her own room after having fallen asleep in Hecate’s bed, book still open in her lap.

She loves those nights with her mother, the soft drift of her hand through Hecate’s long hair as she plaits it, her soothing voice murmuring magical history tales and stories of fairies.

They’ve been reading  _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_  again, and Hecate is still enthralled, loves to lose herself in her mother’s silly voices, just for a few hours.

Nighttime is their time, her father often still at work and unable to interrupt, to say it’s childish or improper to read for pleasure.

She smiles at the book on her nightstand and picks it up, fingers stroking reverently over the cover, over her mother’s inscription on the inside. A secret birthday gift, one father doesn’t know about, that her mother had given her two years ago.

She slips it away under her bed, charming it with a perception spell, just in case, and moves to the door, careful not to disturb Circe, asleep near the foot of the bed.

The rest of the house is eerily quiet as she makes her way toward the kitchen—Father will want his coffee when he wakes, and she thinks maybe she has enough time to make her mother a bit of breakfast, something light that won’t upset her stomach. Toast, she thinks, and that jam her Aunt gave them last week, will do nicely.

She stops in the hallway when she sees her mother, asleep on the sofa in the living room, one arm stretched toward the floor.  It isn’t unusual—her mother hates sleeping in the same bed as her father, something she’d learned early on and has done her best to ignore. They don’t get along, and Hecate can’t remember a time when they have—her mother always soft spoken and gentle, her father abrasive and loud.  Her father, often gone, and her mother, always with an air of melancholy, always smiling but never fully, often silent, lost in her own thoughts.

The blanket she always uses has fallen to the floor, and Hecate crosses the living room to pick it up, draping it carefully over her mother’s shoulders.

Her mother doesn’t stir, or sigh, or snore, or make any of the soft noises she usually does, always a light sleeper, and Hecate pauses. Stares.

And she knows.

She knows without touching her, without checking for the rise and fall of her chest that won’t be there, knows before she feels her cool skin, before she tries shaking her, before her voice splits on a cry, she knows.

She knows before she wakes her father with her screaming, before he shoves her aside, before he disappears. Before the police arrive, and the paramedics. Before her father returns, and puts both hands on her shoulders and holds her back as they transfer her mother away. Before he sits her down on the nearest chair and says calmly, quietly, that there’s nothing she could have done. Says in a voice that’s kinder than she’s ever heard, and ever will again, that sometimes people just don’t get better. Sometimes they just can’t bear it.

“Your mother loved you,” he says, though his voice is firm, and it’s the past tense that catches on Hecate’s heart and pulls, and keeps pulling, and wrenches until it breaks.

_**ii.** _

The dorm is empty when she wakes, all the girls gone, their beds neatly made, and Hecate panics.

She cannot be late, cannot have slept through her alarm, cannot,  _cannot_ have missed her exams.

She’d gone to bed so late, just hours earlier, the last one reading under the covers with a dim light, murmuring spells and potions ingredients to herself.

She’d been satisfied by the time she finally closed the book, sure she knew everything she was supposed to, that she’d ace the test.

But now she’s overslept, and it’s only because she’s so panicked that she doesn’t realize the sun hasn’t risen, that there’s no frantic commotion outside the door, no one prodding her for last minute tips and answers.

A spike of anger washes down her spine, that no one had bothered to wake her. They’ll ask for her help in potions and annoy her into sharing her notes, but not one she would consider her a friend, and apparently none of them consider her even worthy enough of a wake up call.

Pushing the feeling aside, she hurries into her uniform, nearly tripping over her dress, does a quick spell to make the bed and grabs her books from the nightstand, shoving them gracelessly into her bag. She fumbles into her shoes, cursing, and doesn’t even bother with her hair, still in its plait instead of a bun, static and wild from sleep.

Grabbing her bag, she slips out of the dorm and all but runs to her classroom, her footsteps loud in the quiet hallways, and she can’t imagine how late she is, how angry Miss Witherins will be. She’ll have to beg to let her take the exam, and even if she does, Hecate knows the older woman won’t give her time to make it up. She’s lost precious minutes, maybe longer, and she’s near breathless when she skids to a halt in front of the classroom and yanks open the door.

It’s dark and empty.

No Miss Witherins, no students, not even a lone, wandering familiar.

She stares, confused for a long moment before she heard a snort from outside, then a giggle, then raucous laughter. She recognizes the irritating cackle of one of her dorm mates, hears the barely hushed, “Did you see her face? I thought she was gonna have a stroke!”

“I know! And that  _hair_!”

Hecate slams her eyes shut, and lets her bag fall to the crook of her elbow.

Outside, the laughter continues, and she can’t face them. Can’t, won’t, let them see the hurt she knows she can’t hide, has never been good at concealing, if her father is to be believed.

Instead, she walks silently to her desk and sits, staring at the cauldron for a long moment before she pulls her hair to the side and carefully undoes the braid, shaking it out so it spills over her shoulders.

She thinks, in a flash of anger, about cutting it. About chopping it off with magic or the scissors she knows Miss Witherins keeps in her desk drawer. Thinks about setting it on fire.

But her mother had loved her hair, had told her so every time she brushed it for her, and she can’t. It’s the one thing she has that makes her feel safe, feel better when everything else is cold.

Without ceremony, she murmurs the spell to tame it, to wind it back into a tight bun. She knows it makes her look severe, unapproachable, but maybe it’s better that way. To be alone.

Conjuring a small light, Hecate opens her book, and passes the next few hours practicing her potions, making sure her ingredients are exact and her timing perfect.

By the time Miss Witherins enters, it’s hours later and the sun is up, filtering through the windows.

“Miss Hardbroom. What are you doing here?”

Hecate nods in deference. “I just wanted to get a bit more practice in,” she says, “I haven’t been here long.”

Miss Witherins eyes her warily, but eventually relents, and it’s only a few minutes later that the rest of the girls file in.

She stiffens when she hears her roommates, and ignores their whispered giggling and side glances in her direction.

“You alright, HB?” one asks sweetly. “You look awfully tired.”

They erupt in giggles, and Hecate clenches her jaw, the only outward sign of irritation.

She scores a perfect 100% on the exam, but it’s a small consolation for the emptiness in her chest, and Hecate decided that morning that maybe she just isn’t meant to have friends at all.

_**iii.** _

She doesn’t make a habit of falling into bed with strangers.

There’s too much uncertainty, too much awkwardness, for her to ever feel entirely comfortable with someone she’s just met, to talk to them let alone sleep with them.  She’s too stiff and too curt, and most find her sardonic sense of humor and penchant for silence either too intimidating or too standoffish to bother looking any closer.

Amelia is different.

She laughs at Hecate’s dry commentary on the presentations and doesn’t seem to take her perpetually narrowed eyes as any kind of dismissal. She’s quick witted, which Hecate likes, and keeps up with any topic, flowing from conversations about potion ingredients to witching politics to idle gossip with relative ease. Hecate has always detested gossip, having been the subject of it for so long in the Academy, but it doesn’t feel cruel or demeaning when Amelia whispers in her ear about Gregory Black’s penchant for flying or Hazel Bellow’s “disastrous article in Witching Weekly, the poor dear.”

Instead, she feels a slight shudder at Amelia’s breath on her neck, a tingling in her fingers when they brush hands.

Still, she’s surprised when Amelia invites her for dinner after the conference has ended for the day. They talk for hours, and Hecate feels herself relax marginally, enjoying the ability to converse with someone without wanting to grind her teeth together or correct their every other sentence.

She doesn’t quite know how it happens, she never does, but one minute they’re walking back through the lobby of their hotel, and the next Amelia has her pressed against the wall outside her room, hands on her waist and tongue in her mouth.

“I’ve wanted to do that all day,” Amelia admits, biting her lip in a way that makes Hecate feel flushed all over.

Hecate swallows the knot of apprehension in her throat and forces a smirk.  “You should do it again,” she says, all false bravado that Amelia doesn’t catch.

They stumble into bed, and for a few hours, Hecate forgets. Forgets that these things never last, forgets that it’s meaningless, forgets that tomorrow she’ll feel like she’s done something wrong, improper,  _unfortunate._

It’s the last day before she has to return to Catshead Academy, her last few hours of being merely  _Hecate_  before she becomes Miss Hardbroom again, the strict and uncompromising potions teacher all the students fear.

She never wanted to be that, not as a child, but it’s who she’s become and she can’t seem to change, isn’t sure she’d choose to if she could. It’s safe, being who she is—she doesn’t matter to anyone and no one matters to her (or at least, that’s what she tells herself)—there’s no risk of hurting if no one can hurt you.

It’s logical, but lonely, and sometimes she forgets she needs this, too—needs warm hands on her skin and a body against hers and needs to feel something other than her own touch.

Needs  _more._

Amelia gives it to her, and she gives back, until they fall asleep, Amelia’s head pillowed on Hecate’s shoulder.

She isn’t surprised Amelia is gone when she wakes.

There’s no note—no,  _I had a great time, look me up!_  on her Maglet, no contact information. She could find her easily, she knows, as Amelia could find her, but she takes it as a sign that the other woman doesn’t want to be found.  That it is what it is, and nothing more.

She never hears from Amelia again.

_**iv.** _

The first thing she recognizes is pain.

A pounding in her skull before she’s even opened her eyes, muscles that ache, limbs that won’t quite move correctly.

There’s a sliver of sunlight peeking through the blinds, but the room is mercifully otherwise dark and still.

Cracking her eyes open takes effort, but she manages, barely, to survey her surroundings. The infirmary.

She can’t remember why.

Her chest aches, like there’s something heavy on top of it, and she feels weak, but there’s no one around to ask why, what happened, what’s wrong with her. It makes her heart skip, a familiar panic, and she forces herself to breathe even though it hurts, everything hurts, and she can’t hold back the pained moan that falls from her lips.

She tries to call for someone—anyone—but her throat is dry and raw, like she’s been screaming.

She doesn’t remember screaming, doesn’t remember anything, can’t think straight at all with the splitting pain behind her eyes. She can’t move, can’t even lift a hand, her range of motion quelled to nothing more than curling her fingers into the scratchy blanket.

She refuses to cry, but oh, she wants to. Wants to sob—the pain and the disorientation and the stillness of the room pressing down on her, suffocating.

And then there’s a voice, soft and slightly scolding, “Don’t try to move.”

Hecate blinks, and her vision blurs.

“What—” she tries, but the nurse hushes her.

“It’s alright, dear. You’re safe now.”

Settling two fingers on the inside of her wrist, the nurse waits a moment, then makes a  _tsking_ sound that’s too loud, echoes in her head like a gong.

“How?”

“You don’t remember?”

Hecate tries to shake her head, but the pain rattles in her skull, down her spine, and she bites her lip so hard it bleeds to keep from crying out.

“Careful,” the nurse murmurs. “You were out collecting snapdragons in the greenhouse, and it appears someone has been growing gympies in there. You must not have seen them.”

She recognizes the name, but it takes her a moment to place it—it’s a plant, she knows, poisonous, used only in rare, often malevolent spells. Why someone would be growing it, on school grounds no less, makes no sense at all. She also doesn’t know why she would touch one, how she could have missed it.

As if reading her thoughts, the nurse smiles kindly. “Someone used a cloaking spell. Took us hours to find out what was wrong with you.” She looks a bit dismayed at that, a bit embarrassed. “But the anaphylaxis was pretty obvious—you’re lucky the headmistress found you when she did.”

“Miss Catshead?”

The nurse nods, and finally, finally, slips her a few pieces of ice.

“She went looking for you when you missed your lesson.”

Hecate swallows, grateful for the cool liquid along her throat.

“Now how’s the pain?”

With considerable effort, she manages, “Seven,” and the nurse sighs.

“That’s a ten in normal people, then,” she says, given Hecate a disapproving look. “Don’t think you can fool me, Miss Hardbroom.”

She’s grateful, almost, and then terribly so, when the nurse murmurs a healing spell and the pain begins to recede.

When it’s down to a manageable level, and she can think clearly, she remembers: gathering plants for her potions class, a prick on her finger, tingling and pain and then it had been hard to breathe, and then impossible. A shooting pain in her stomach that made her double over. A hoarse shout no one heard. Blackness.

“Drink this,” the nurse says, helping her sit up. “Sleeping draught. You’ll feel much better when you wake.”

“My students—”

“Will be fine for a few days. I’m afraid you aren’t going anywhere for a good while.”

Hecate shudders, unable to bear the thought of another night in the cold, silent ward, but the nurse doesn’t budge, and she reluctantly takes a long sip of the potion.

She feels instantly exhausted, her eyes fluttering shut, and the nurse gently lowers her back down and tucks the blanket around her shoulders.

“Sleep tight, Miss Hardbroom,” the nurse says.

She does.

_**v.** _

She doesn’t know when she dozed off, but she wakes with a crick in her neck and a third year potions exam stuck to her cheek.

It’s hardly the worst place she’s fallen asleep, nor the first time in this exact scenario, and she wonders if perhaps she should have heeded Ada’s warning about burning the candle at both ends a bit more thoughtfully.

She straightens, her spine protesting every movement, and carefully smooths the paper back to normal with a wave of her hand. Her shoulders are stiff, muscles tense, and she rubs at the junction of her neck, trying to ease the pain.

It does little to help.

She knows she’s been running herself ragged even more so than usual lately. It’s the end of the term near about, and there’s always something to do—mock tests to write and papers to grade and students to help after hours for those who ask. There’s the end of term dance to prepare for and a conference in June she still needs to finish her paper for, books to read and her own research to conduct.

She likes being busy—it keeps her from thinking about that empty space in her life, in her heart, in her bed.

There’s no one to fill it, not even a prospect, and she has long since contented herself with the family she’s found at Cackles. With Ada’s unwavering friendship, with her girls, with the rest of the staff. It’s more of a home than she’s ever had, since her mother died, and it’s more than she ever dared to hope for.

But sometimes, on nights like this, she  _wishes—_

Hecate shakes her head, scolding herself. Wishes do nothing, and besides, she’s better off alone and always has been.

There’s a few hours still until sun-up, and she debates getting a bit of sleep, but knows she won’t really rest. Her thoughts are too jumbled, the exhaustion in her bones losing out to an emptiness in her chest she doesn’t quite know how to fill.

The days she feels this way are thankfully few, but they happen, and she tries not to feel ridiculous for the sentimentality.

For wanting someone to turn to, someone to make sure she eats and sleeps and takes care of herself. Someone who knows her, and stays.

Ada tries, bless her, but it isn’t the same, isn’t quite what she’s looking for. Hecate loves her dearly, would do anything she asked and then some, but looking now at the cold, empty bed, she wants something more.

Something lasting.

Something that won’t hurt her, in the end.

 _Some things just aren’t meant to be,_ her father used to say.

Sometimes, on her more melancholy nights, Hecate wonders if her happiness is one of them.

_**+i** _

She can’t move.

For a moment, caught between sleep and waking, she feels paralyzed, feels the tingle of gympies and her father’s hands on her shoulders. She tries again to rise, but there’s a grumble behind her, and an arm tightens around her waist and pulls her back, a cold nose snuffling into her hair.

Pippa.

Pippa’s nose and Pippa’s arm and Pippa’s body, pressed snugly against her own, her leg thrown over Hecate’s hip as she clutches her like a worn teddy bear.

“No moving,” Pippa mumbles into her shoulder. “Sleep.”

Hecate stills, craning her neck to look over her shoulder, and the sight makes her heart fumble.

She’s still here.

Not just here, in the castle or in her room but  _here,_  in her bed, her feet cold against Hecate’s calf, hand possessive against Hecate’s ribs, eyelashes fluttering against Hecate’s bare shoulder.

They’re both naked, which Hecate supposes should have been her first revelation, and the night comes flooding back to her—Pippa’s smile and her touch and her gasps, Pippa’s murmured endearments and her love and her light.

She’d fallen a long time ago, she knows, feels like she spent years half suspended; but Pippa had caught her, like she always promised to. Caught her and held on tight and refused to let go, even for a moment.

Her eyes sting at the thought, the barely conceivable notion that Pippa wants this—has wanted this—for as long as she has. Just as fiercely. Just as much.

Turning over on her back, Hecate smiles at the frown on Pippa’s face as she’s forced to resettle, at the way she all but manhandles Hecate into the position she wants, using her as her personal pillow.

Hecate can’t say she minds.

With her arm around Pippa’s shoulders, fingers carding gently through her hair, she falls back asleep, safe and content, and doesn’t wake for another hour, when Pippa finally stirs.

Pippa blinks lazily at her, a slow smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “Good morning.”

Sleep tousled and foggy eyed, Pippa is so beautiful Hecate can scarcely breathe.

“What’s for breakfast?”

Hecate stares at her. And then, for the first time in a long, long while, she laughs. The sound is involuntarily, strange in her mouth, and Pippa blinks, suddenly awake and grinning as she shoves Hecate’s shoulder playfully.

“What? I get hungry!”

Hecate bites her lip to contain the sound, but Pippa shakes her head, running a finger along Hecate’s lip.

“Don’t,” she murmurs. “I love when you laugh.”

Warmth spreads through her like a forest fire, setting her alight. Hecate flushes, ducking her head, and Pippa kisses her cheek, her nose, her eyelids.

Hecate thinks, she could wake up like this for the rest of her life.

She knows it can’t be all the days. They live in different places, have different responsibilities, other people counting on them; but she knows, staring into Pippa’s soft eyes, so full of love, that it can be any day.

Any day she chooses.

And it’s enough.


End file.
